Gene Carl freely shares his love of learning

He’s the man who figured out how to propagate Torrey pines by sheltering the young seedlings under the branches of bigger trees.

Most of the Torrey pines along Highway 52 are his work.

He built a 30-foot waterfall on one end of a canyon where his nursery used to be in San Marcos.

He tilted at windmills once by running as an independent for the state Senate in the old 38th District in 1998; Bill Morrow waxed him.

But crowded San Diego roads chafed Carl some and development hemmed him in. So about 10 years ago he pulled up stakes and moved his nursery operation (he was considered the largest New Zealand flax wholesale producer in California at the time) to Nipomo on the Central Coast.

There, he built a house and barn and expanded his nursery, planted trees and a garden and made a little Eden under the shoulders of the mountains to the east.

And, as he has done his whole life, he observed nature.

That has led him to some wisdom.

For instance, Carl — now in his 70s — says if you watch a plant being attacked by an insect, think about what is stressing the plant. Change the conditions and the attack goes away. It is, he says, that stress that allows the insect to dominate.

Birds and animals, fish, too, work the same way.

An astonishing thing Carl has done is to have figured out something unique: How to hatch and raise trout in a closed, recirculated water system — there isn’t a bit of moving surface water near his place.

Carl says that about 45 years ago, he saw a scientific study and started thinking about raising the oxygen level in water by pumping air into it, like an aerator in an aquarium tank.

“I started putting two and two together,” he says.

More oxygen, he reasoned, would allow fish, specifically trout, to live in warmer water.

His first try was a successful catch-out pond in Fallbrook in the 1960s.

When he moved his Lone Pine Nursery to Nipomo, he was ready to try again.

He built raceways, (there’s six of them 10 feet wide by 100 feet long, four feet deep), installed compressors and pipes, filled the runs with water from his well, and connected the raceways to a holding pond from which he pulls water to irrigate his flax pots. He built a classroom for local school kids and others to come study biology.

To keep the fish from being sunburned and to cool the water, he devised long shades to cover the raceways.

The project works.

He has hatched and raised all sorts of rainbow, including whirling-disease resistant Hofers, some of which grew to 15 pounds in a hurry.

“It brings a lot of things to consummation,” he says. “… a lot of things had to fall in place.”

Lately, he has invented an inexpensive hatching box that works with astonishing efficiency — a biologist has certified that the survival rate of the fry is over 95 percent — and could be used in any stream bed or lake.

Both state Fish and Wildlife and federal fishery officials are studying the box.

His next step was to experiment with an artificial stream bed to see if trout can be coaxed to spawn in his system.

He takes no profit from any of this — it is all done for the wonder, for study and research. He wants to give the ideas and technology away.

Now, if only those who run the fishery programs will listen and learn.

Kent Davy is the former editor of the North County Times. Contact him at kent2davy@gmail.com.